“The Rut” changes all the rules

Robert WellerFriends of ELO, Hunting Stories & Adventures, Hunting Tips & Techniques

Mid-October days are some of the hardest days to be at work when you’re a bowhunter. The leaves are changing color, and the temps are dropping but, duty calls and you can’t afford to hunt if you don’t go to work. Yet those vacation days that you have saved up for deer hunting are calling to you saying, “take a day off and go to the woods.” It takes so much willpower to get up and go to work when your mind keeps telling you “There’s just bound to be a big buck on the prowl out there somewhere”. Still, I have learned that those vacation days are much better spent during the first ten days of November. You know, those first ten days of November in Michigan, when the rut gets going and the deer move like no other time of year. It can be the most exciting and at the same time can also be the most frustrating time in the woods. But friends let me tell you, if there is one thing I have learned to be an indisputable fact of deer hunting, it is this: “the Rut” changes all the rules. I have seen some crazy things happen during “the Rut”. I have walked within 5 yards of rut crazed bucks, and they never knew I was there. I would be willing to bet that just about anyone who has paid any attention at all to deer movement during the rut will agree that the whitetail buck transforms from a stealthy / scarcely seen ghost into a love crazed fool. Patterns go out the window and deer start showing up in areas where they have never been seen before. The downfall, at least as far as I have experienced, is that sometimes it can be impossible to get a buck away from a hot doe and if she doesn’t get close enough for you to make a shot on her, he won’t either. It’s still by far my favorite time to deer hunt even if it can be some of the most challenging time spent in the woods. So, every time I start getting the itch to burn a day off and hit the woods in October, I like to remind myself of one of those frustrating and exciting hunts from my past. 

It was November 6, 2004, and I had taken the week off to bow hunt. It was the first time I had ever taken that kind of time off work just to hunt and I was very excited to be in the woods for an entire week during the rut. I had seen two nice bucks on the property I was hunting that October and was certain that once the rut was in full swing, I would get a crack at one of them. As I got my hunting clothes on and grabbed my bow that morning, my most difficult decision as usual was deciding which stand to sit in. I had seen good deer movement at the top of the hill but the stand I called “Old Faithful” at the bottom of the hill was hard to walk past and not climb into. I decided to head for “old Faithful” but as I approached the tree, I started to doubt my decision. I was there plenty early and felt I had enough time to climb the hill and get to my other stand without risking bumping any deer. So, I made a last-minute decision to head to the top of the hill and hopefully catch a big boy running the fence line cruising for a hot doe. I got to my stand well before daybreak and was all settled in when the sun came up. I’ll never forget that morning because it was unseasonably warm. In fact, the temperature was just above seventy degrees, and it was very windy. The later it got the stronger the wind was, and, in my experience, windy, and especially warm and windy days produce less deer movement. That morning seemed to be no exception to the rule as I had sat all morning and had not seen a deer. It was about 10:30, maybe 11 in the morning when I finally caught a glimpse of a tall racked 8 point. He was a couple hundred yards away and wouldn’t you know it, he walked right under “Old Faithful”. I rattled and grunted as loud as I could, but the buck never even gave me a look. The wind was just too loud, and he probably could not hear anything I was doing.

I sat there hopeful that I might eventually see him circle back around and come sneaking up the fence line to my location, but it never happened. The sun had moved high overhead, it was getting warmer, and the wind was getting stronger. The morning had certainly not gone how I had envisioned it would go. I decided that I had had enough and that there was no way I was going to see any more deer moving that morning as it just seemed too warm. It was not hard to convince myself that I was wasting my time staying in the tree any longer. I started packing up my things and had my bow on the haul line ready to lower it down when I heard a commotion in the leaves. The noise seemed to be getting louder and closer. I quickly lifted my bow back up and removed the haul line. As I removed an arrow from the quiver, I looked up and there 20 yards in front of me stood two very large doe. I thought to myself, “why not, I can use the meat and I have no problem shooting a doe”. Well, the two of them either heard my thoughts and decided they were not interested in joining me for dinner or they caught a glimpse of my movement because they bolted straight through the brush and out to the open field. Just as they jumped the fence, I heard one of the deepest grunts I have ever heard in my life. I quickly trained my eyes to the direction I heard the grunt come from and desperately hoped it was the buck I had seen earlier. As the antlers emerged from the brush, I quickly realized it was a different buck but he was definitely a shooter. I looked back to see if the doe were still in sight and to my surprise they had stopped once they crossed the fence line. They were standing there watching me as I prepared to draw on the buck. I knew they were going to spook as soon as I moved but if I didn’t draw my bow there was no chance of taking the buck home with me that day. As I drew my bow one of the doe blew and took off running causing the buck to stop dead in his tracks. He was still on the trail in front of me and facing head on towards me. After he realized one of his potential girlfriends was running away, the buck spun to his right and started to cut directly through the brush on a direct line to catch up with her. I had very little time to react so, I quickly found a hole in the brush that I was confident I could shoot through. The hole couldn’t have been larger than a coffee can but, it was now or never so I took aim and got the sight pin in the center of the hole as fast as I could. The buck wasn’t wasting any time and it all seemed to happen in the matter of a second or two. As soon as I saw the buck’s shoulder cross my sight pin, I pulled the trigger of my release. What happened next, is something I have not had happen again in twenty years. The buck was in the middle of a grunt when the arrow struck him, and his grunt turned into sort of a grunt / squeal. I knew by the sound he made and by the crack of the arrow that I had nailed him. He wheeled around one-hundred-eighty degrees and took off and I spun around in the stand expecting to see him go crashing to the ground but to my disbelief he just kept right on running. He turned and ran slightly straighter West and ended up running straight away and directly behind me. Just as he vanished out of sight, I heard a deer blow. I spun back around and was shocked to see the other doe still standing there. She eventually took off with her tail in the air and disappeared over the hill. I sat down and replayed the events that had just taken place, over and over in my mind. I kept praying and hoping that I had made a good shot. It was hard but I forced myself to sit there for the next half hour. Now folks I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that thirty minutes is a long time when you want nothing more than to get down and start tracking a deer. Eventually the half hour passed, and I climbed down from my stand. I walked over to the spot the deer was when I shot expecting to find my arrow sticking out of the ground and covered in blood. But all I found was the back third or so of the arrow shaft, meaning the shot was not a pass through.

My heart sank and doubt started to set in immediately. I began to walk the direction the deer had run off in looking desperately for a blood trail, but what little blood that I found amounted to mere pin drops and those drops were spread out ten to sometimes twenty or more yards apart. I found myself constantly walking big circles trying to find the next spot of blood. My hopes of finding this deer were very quickly fading away. I stopped and took off my pack and shed a layer of clothes as by now I was sweating. The physical movement and the anxiety were making my heart race, and I knew I had to calm myself down. I did the only thing I could, and I knelt to pray. I don’t know how long I knelt for, but I do know besides asking for help finding my deer that I asked for peace over the situation. When I lifted my head and began to think about what I could do to increase my chances, it occurred to me that it had rained the night before. Directly to the West and just across the fence from the vacant land I was hunting was a field full of corn. I thought maybe I should just stop looking for blood and go walk the edge of the corn field. With the rain the night before, new tracks would be easy to spot. So, I left everything but my bow behind and I headed for the corn field. Once I reached the edge of the property, I rounded the fence and began scouring the lane on the edge of the corn. I walked back and forth for over a hundred yards, but I didn’t cut a single track. I started to think the buck could have turned and headed into the woods just North of the corn and I decided to walk up and check the edge of the woods for tracks or blood. Still, I found no sign of my buck. My mind began to race again with all kinds of thoughts on where this buck could have possibly gone. I was trying to keep my composure and my wits so I could continue to think rationally. I decided to walk South again and go beyond my footprints on the edge of the corn and continue to look for blood or fresh tracks. Just as I started down the hill, I felt something telling me to stop. I can ‘t describe it but I suddenly got a feeling that I was not even close to being on the right track and a voice in my head kept saying “look back”. I stopped and thought “look back where?” I turned my head and tried to look back in the direction of my tree stand and as I looked into the thickets and briars, I saw something really out of place. Something white, it was a deer’s white belly and as I climbed up on the fence and looked closer, I could see antlers. It was my buck!! He had gone just over two-hundred yards from my stand and driven himself deep into the thickest cover he could find and expired. I ran to the thicket and fought my way through it as fast as I could without a care in the world for all the scratches and snags, I was getting on my hands and clothes. As I laid my hands on the buck’s antlers for the first time, I counted nine points. I examined the deer to see where I had hit him and as I rolled him over, I realized why I didn’t get a pass through. The arrow entered high and just behind the shoulder as it should, but the arrow struck the offside leg and became lodged in his chest so when he took his first steps, he snapped off the rear section of the arrow. The remaining section of the shaft was blocking the exit hole, keeping the wound from leaving much of a blood trail. I always like learning from my shots and figuring out what happened. Each one teaches me more about the sport of archery deer hunting. 

I made a few phone calls to friends and family telling them each the story of my warm and windy day success. When I arrived home and showed the buck to my wife, she was impressed and completely supportive of me getting another shoulder mount. This buck made my third wall mount in three years. He was a magnificent animal, and that hunt was one of my most memorable. To this day, when I think about that hunt, I shake my head as I still can’t believe a buck of that caliber was out running around on a warm, seventy plus degree and windy day.

But, as I said before, “The Rut changes all the rules”. So my friends, if you’re sitting at work thinking about using a vacation day or two to go hunting mid-October, think twice. You don’t want to miss out on the action that you will find in the first 10 days of November. I hope you all get to experience the excitement of hunting the rut this season. May your adventures be exciting and successful. Go find yourself one of those rut crazed bucks and make some memories. As always, good luck in the woods, happy hunting, and God Bless!!

Robert Weller
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